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The Street
Series: Virago Modern Classics
Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.
Check link for latest rating. ( 13,092 ratings, 1,668 reviews)
Brief Description
From the time she was born, she had been hemmed into an ever-narrowing space, until now she was very nearly walled in... New York City, 1940s. In a crumbling tenement in Harlem, Lutie Johnson is determined to build a new life for herself and her eight-year-old...
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Format: Paperback / softback
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See moreThe first book by a black women to sell over one million copies - this gripping novel from 1946 is as prescient and powerful today as when it was first published. Now reissued as part of the Virago Modern Classics Green Spine design.
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Description
From the time she was born, she had been hemmed into an ever-narrowing space, until now she was very nearly walled in...
New York City, 1940s. In a crumbling tenement in Harlem, Lutie Johnson is determined to build a new life for herself and her eight-year-old boy, Bub. Having left her unreliable husband, Lutie believes that with hard work and resolve, she can begin again. But in her struggle to earn a respectable living amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of her surroundings, Lutie is soon trapped: she is a woman alone, 'too good-looking to be decent', with predators at every turn.
The first book by a Black woman to sell more than a million copies, The Street combines the pace of a thriller with an unflinching portrait of injustice and hope.
Introduced by TAYARI JONES
'The prose is clear, the plot is page-turning, the characters are utterly believable' โ CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
'Like the human experience, this book is riddled with pain, but somehow powered by hope' โ TAYARI JONES
'I've recently had my brain re-wired by Ann Petry, and it's that exhilarating feeling of falling in love with one of your lifetime writers for the first time' โ BRANDON TAYLOR
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780349019635
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 23 January 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Virago Press Ltd
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 28.0mm
Width: 126.0mm
Height: 196.0mm
Weight: 320g
Pages: 416
About the Author
Ann Petry (1908-1997), novelist and writer of short stories and books for young people, was one of America's most distinguished authors. Her first published story appeared in 1943 in the Crisis. She then began on her first novel, The Street, which was published in 1946 and for which she received the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. Petry wrote two more novels, The Country Place and The Narrows, and numerous short stories, articles and children's books.
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